Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

6
CROSSING THE
CARPATHIANS
The great arc of the Carpathian mountains created a natural barrier to the
westerly advance of the Scythians into central Europe. Some groups had
spread into the forest steppe zone along the River Dniester and the Prut, a
tributary of the Danube, but for a while Scythian influence stopped at the eastern
foothills of the mountains. To the south the Carpathian range (here known as the
Transylvanian Alps) swings west to flank the lower Danube valley as far as the Iron
Gates, where the river cuts through the mountains in a spectacular gorge. South of
the river the Balkan range and the Stara Planina create a formidable southern boundary
to the lower Danube valley.
There were several possible routes between the Pontic steppe and the west. The
most obvious is the lower Danube valley itself. Once through the Iron Gates the
Carpathian Basin opens up to vast areas of steppe, the Great Hungarian Plain and
then the Little Hungarian Plain, together occupying the land east and north of the
river as it makes its dramatic bends through the basin. Across the river, to the west,
lay the more varied undulating landscape of Transdanubia, eventually giving way
to the Alps. The Carpathians were not an impenetrable barrier. The Mureş River, a
tributary of the Tisza, rising high in the mountains created a way through and there
were other passes, though more difficult to navigate. Nor should we forget that the
Dniester River, flanking the east side of the Carpathians, offered easy access to the
North European Plain and the great river systems of the Bug, the Vistula, and the
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